Naomi Grigg’s skating years – Part 13

Naomi Grigg’s skating years – Part 13 by Naomi Grigg

So, I made the fast team for Le Mans. And that’s where the fun of competition seemed to end, and they joy and arrogance of knowing I was fast began – just like when I came to London and was able to measure myself against other freestyle skaters, when we went to Le Mans we were able to measure ourselves against the ‘pros’ for the first time. And it was quite a shock, I can tell you.

It was an awesome weekend – we hired a small bus for us to travel there and back in, and had to camp the Friday and Sunday nights in a regular campsite, and on Saturday night we were able to camp at the Le Mans circuit itself. We arrived after dark on Friday and couldn’t see a thing – a lot of people were putting up borrowed or new tents they’d never used before, and it was really miserable trying to get everything sorted. Saturday came all too soon, and we found ourselves packing up again to go to the circuit. On arrival we had to wait in a massive queue as everyone got sorted, and eventually were able to set up camp relatively close to the edge of the camping area.

We were going out there for fun, so there was no nerves for anyone I don’t think – we were just some English street skaters who were joining in a speed skating race – hell, we were going to take pride in the fact that we were just there for fun. I was boasting about how I was going to do a lap doing the grapevine, and Sparky was joking around about how he was going to do a lap backwards, all taking the mick out of how serious the French teams were taking it. Really, I’d love to have some footage of those times, and then again a few hours later of each of us sat there, psyching ourselves up for another lap of 110% effort, and afterwards returning to yell ‘DID I DO IT???? DID MAKE IT???’ to whoever was timing our lap before collapsing, spent, on the tarmac.